Whiskey Lullaby
by foxboro
Summary: A songfic to the haunting words of Whiskey Lullaby. Sad! Elizabeth decides between Jack and Will...has she made the right choice? Read, enjoy, then PLEASE review!


**Disclaimer. Unfortunately I own nothing. Jack, Elizabeth and The Black Pearl belong to the Disney Corporation.**

**The beautiful, haunting 'Whiskey Lullaby' belongs to Brad Paisley (and features Alison Krauss)**

**This songfic leads straight on from the end of AEW. Please read, enjoy and review…your comments are the only things that keep me writing!**

**Please be aware that this is sad!**

Whiskey Lullaby

Elizabeth was leaving The Pearl. She walked down the line of people assembled to pay her their respects. Eventually, lastly, she came to Jack.

"Jack," she said wistfully, "It would never have worked out between us."

"Keep tellin' yerself that, Darlin'," he replied, a regretful grin on his face.

She leaned in to kiss him, and he held up both hands to block her.

"Once is quite enough"…

'_After everythin' we went through…_' he thought to himself, later, all the times we worked together, fought together, laughed together and she comes out with a line like that!

'_Jack, it would never have worked out between us…huh!_'

The night before, he had given her the option. They had talked long into the night. He had spent hours trying to make her see sense, trying to make her see what they had and how it would work. They were meant to be together. Their relationship was unique, they fought with all the viciousness of a pair of vipers, they each skirted round the other, circling warily like tigers in a cage, but it would work.

They had moments together when electricity charged them. When all he wanted to do was sweep her into his arms and kiss her senseless, twine his fingers into her hair and never release her. His body throbbed for her, his dreams waking him in the night with the intensity of his feelings. It always would. She belonged by his side, mistress of The Pearl. He needed her desperately. His future loomed, as empty as the horizon, as desolate as his aching heart.

She had chosen the welp. That wet, uninteresting and plebeian nemisis. The irony being, that it was Jack himself who had saved him, he mused. His quick thinking that had given William eternal life. _His_ love for Elizabeth that had ended his quest for immortality as Captain of The Flying Dutchman. He had handed her on a plate to Will. He had, quite unintentionally, ended his dream. In saving her the pain of Williams death, he had plunged himself into the darkest pit of hell. Plagued himself into this living nightmare, where the sun never shone, the nights were endless and cold and his dreams would never become reality. She had abandoned him! Left him alone to wilt and die. Had chosen, instead, to live for the one day every ten years when she and the welp could be together. With those few words, that he himself, had once uttered to her flung in his face, her decision was made…'Jack. It would never have worked out between us."…He was destroyed!

_She put him out, like the burning end of a midnight cigarette_

_She broke his heart, he spent his whole life tryin' to forget._

_We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time_

_But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind_

_Until the night…_

Over time, he had ceased to function. Locked in his cabin, consumed by his thoughts. Images of her, vibrant and alive and with him, kept him cocooned in his emotions. No-one else allowed in – except the one thing that helped him, slightly – rum! It blurred the edges of his pain, allowed him to hold the shattered pieces of his heart together just enough to survive – to enable him to remember her, to replay her image over and over in his mind, like a malignant cancer eating away at him.

For months he had lived with the hope that she would return, would change her mind and come to him. On every return to port he had scoured the streets looking for her, visited every Tavern in the hope of finding a message left for him. Slowly, though over the months, the hope had drifted away, lost on an empty sea of sadness, leaving him an empty, broken shell of the energetic, virile man he had once been. Before.

Now, he had lost everything. His beloved 'Lizzie and now, also, his treasured Pearl. He couldn't blame them. He had ceased to function…had put them all at risk…had become a liability. Unable and unwilling to make even the slightest decision. On his return to the dock, following yet another fruitless search of the port, The Pearl had gone, leaving him once again empty and bereft of any security…and the one place she had been.

He returned to the Taverns. His only companion the bottle in his hand, replaced frequently. The only solace he had left…apart from memories. Memories that ripped his soul apart and scattered it to the four winds. He had no future, no desire for one without her at his side. He continued to drink – to drown his pain.

_He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger_

_And finally drank away her memory._

_Life is short, but this time it was bigger_

_Than the strength he had to get up off his knees._

_We found him with his face down in the pillow_

_With a note that said 'I'll love her till I die'_

_And when we buried him beneath the willows_

_The angels sang a whiskey lullaby._

Within the shortest time of leaving Jack on The Pearl, she knew that she had made the wrong decision. At the time, she had been certain that, although she cared for him, her true feelings lay with Will, and, despite his enforced abscense, she had enough love for him to sustain her through the ten years ubtil she would see him again. Although their twenty-four hours on land, together, had been magical, a time she would always treasure, she had not thought through the lonliness, the sheer, unclimable chasm that she needed to scale to maintain her love for him.

Her memories were all of Jack. She had heard the stories that were whispered behind covered mouths whenever she passed gossips in the town. She knew that he was desperate for her to contact him. The tales of his drinking were common knowledge. Everyone said that she had broken his heart.

What about hers, she thought. Her emotions were being pulled in two directions. She had her Husband, away for ten years at a time, able to spend only twenty-four hours with her before returning to his duties at sea. How could she destroy him by taking away the anticipation of that day? Her pride wouldn't let her.

She loved Jack, She knew it as easily as she knew her own name. Loved him with a passion that over-rode her childish infatuation with the idea of being in love with Will.

She couldn't admit to everyone that she was wrong. Couldn't return to Jack, her tail between her legs like a whipped and beaten dog. She had made her decision and she must – _she must_ – stand by it, however much the guilt ate away at her. She hated the thought that she had caused him pain. Was destroyed to think that this once proud, almost arrogant man had been brought to his knees by her. Her decision – the wrong one!

Her guilt was eased slightly by the rum she drank at night. It dulled her senses, allowed her to remember her time at sea, with Jack, without the desperate longing congealing in her heart. And then she heard….he was dead!

_The rumours flew but nobody knew how much she blamed herself_

_For years and years, she tried to hide the whiskey on her breath._

_She finally drank her pain away a little at a time_

_But she never could get drunk enough to get him off her mind_

_Until the night…_

Her whole world imploded. He was gone…never to be seen again. The pain was immense – uncontrollable, gut wrenching spasms of grief and despair.

She remembered his proud and noble face, his slow, lazy grin that showed a glint of gold. His eyes, darker than a stormy sky, deeper than the ocean itself, flashing hunger and confusion in equal measures.

She would never see his face again. Something inside her cried out and died. It was her heart, she realised. Just knowing that he was alive, on the planet with her, had given her hope. The conviction that someday he would just turn up on her doorstep, like a bad penny and take the decision out of her hands. Now it was final! It would never happen. He was gone…and it was her fault. She had killed him as sure as holding a loaded gun to his head and pulling the trigger. All she had left were her memories, which crowded together, tumbling about in her mind until the images fused together in a fog of drunken stupor.

Her life stretched, endlessly before her. Filled with pain and grief and guilt. Filled with darkness and remorse, with no respite possible, spiralling down into the dark abyss, no hope, no light, no end.

_She put the bottle to her head and pulled the trigger_

_And finally drank away his memory._

_Life is short, but this time it was bigger_

_Than the strength she had to get up off her knees._

_We found her with her face down in the pillow_

_Clinging to his picture for dear life._

_We laid her next to him beneath the willow_

_While the angels sang a whiskey lullaby._

**That's all folks.**

**Sad! Please review! Please!**


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